Google Being Evil

Google is spending a lot of time on its "Smart City" project in Toronot, but it appears rather likely that their promises of respecting resident privacy is a sham, since privacy expert Ann Cavoukian has abruptly resigned from the project, and issued a scathing letter stating that her concerns are being ignored:

Ontario’s former privacy commissioner has resigned from her consulting role at a company that is preparing to build a high-tech community at Toronto’s waterfront, citing concerns that a privacy framework she developed is being overlooked.

Ann Cavoukian resigned from her role from Google sister company Sidewalk Labs on Friday to “make a strong statement” she told Global News.

“I felt I had no choice because I had been told by Sidewalk Labs that all of the data collected will be de-identified at source,” she said.

But last Thursday, at a meeting, she said she found out that wasn’t the case with the company, which invested $40 million to develop technology for a downtown Toronto smart city project.

“Sidewalk said while they would commit to doing it, the other parties involved in these new entities they’ve created…they couldn’t make them do it,” she said.

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Former Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie called the project “a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism.”

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“Your personal information, your privacy is critical. It is not just a fundamental human right. It forms the foundation of our freedom,” Cavoukian said.

Google is evil, and it, and Facebook, and the rest of the Silicon snake oil sales men who try to make their money off of your personal data, need to be regulated aggressively.